Reversing the Brain Drain? Skilled Return Migration and the Global Movement of Expert Knowledge - Dissertation Executive Summary

Abstract

My dissertation explores how skilled return migrants adapt the expertise they gained working abroad to workplaces in their home countries with data from an original survey of 4,183 skilled returnees from 81 countries, who had worked abroad in the U.S. First, I find that whether returnees are successful at transferring knowledge depends less on their individual ability and more on features of the professional environments in their home countries. Also, returnees who are effective brokers of knowledge bring back ideas about management practices more than they do technical knowledge. Third, returnees are more likely to become entrepreneurs if they have strong local ties to their home countries, the effect of which is stronger in countries with already high rates of self-employment. Finally, the very returnees who are most successful as knowledge brokers are also most likely to venture abroad again. These findings challenge the conventional notion of return migrants as agents of economic transformation, suggesting that many institutional challenges stand in the way of their ability to broker resources across borders.